The gun epidemic is the leading cause of death of young African- American men, more than the next nine causes put together. So we have to do two things, as I said. We have to restore trust. We have to work with the police. We have to make sure they respect the communities and the communities respect them.

We are desperately in need of the kind of smart diplomacy that has worked for America in the past. If you use force, it should be a last resort. And it needs to be used with full understanding of the consequences.

You're not a leader if you haven't been elected.

We're now on the precipice of having a potentially much better economy, but the last thing we need to do is to go back to the policies that failed us in the first place.

In America, we trade more energy with our neighbors than we trade with the rest of the world combined. And I do want us to have an electric grid, an energy system that crosses borders. I think that would be a great benefit to us.

Every time I meet somebody who's been affected by something I worked on, I feel like, yes, that's what I want to do, whether the Children's Health Insurance Program or making drugs safer for kids or helping more kids get a doctor, whatever it might be.

It wasn't until 1998 that I ever seriously thought about running for office. And I didn't make up my mind to do that until 1999, and then I ran for the Senate. It was really hard for me.